To chat or not to chat?

In my last Freedom Life post, I was about to take a course with some scarily credentialled people.  Now four weeks have passed, a better description of them would be scarily cardboard.  By ‘cardboard’ I mean it’s hard to discern their individual personalities, so they feel more like cardboard cutouts than fully-fleshed people.  Not flimsy cardboard – there’s heft in all those credentials – but one-dimensional cutouts all the same.

Our course includes an online group chat, in which we’re encouraged to share our thoughts on that week’s case study.  No-one chats in there, though.  They type out their thoughts in brief and perfunctory exhalations, and then they leave.  No pleasantries, no casual questions.  Their style reminds me of when I took Russian lessons in my thirties, and my teacher, a toothless babushka who wore too much jewellery, shouted at me for being too pleasant.

“When you are in a shop, you get what you want and you go!,” she roared incredulously, spittle flying every which way.  “You do not talk about the weather.  You do not say hello.  You get and you go.  Do you understand this?”.  I nodded weakly, but silently I wondered why I was paying her if I wasn’t going to learn any social niceties.  They’re the oil that keeps the conversational wheels turning.  They connect you with other people on a human level, which has value that goes beyond simply getting what you want in a shop.

I have worked with super-intelligent, well-off, credentialled people for a lot of my career.  I even married one, once.  Most of them, including my ex-husband, would fare extremely well in Russian malls.

I’m learning a lot of interesting and valuable things on this course, which is great, but I’d have also liked a few fun chats with the people I’m learning them with.  Not many, and not all the time.  Just enough to reveal ourselves as people.  The efforts I’ve made so far have admittedly been small, but that’s partly because starting a non-course-related chat feels like breaking an unwritten rule.  During this hellish week-of-heat, I shared an excellent ‘keep cool’ tip given to me by a friend (if you’re interested, it’s this: fill your hot water bottle with cold water, then put it in the freezer.  When you go to bed, wrap the iced bottle with a towel and use it as you’d would normally).

No-one responded to or acknowledged the tip – or indeed, my comments about that week’s case study – which felt embarrassing, and then I felt embarrassed about feeling embarrassed about something as silly as that.  Then I felt embarrassed about wanting to chat with people who are clearly too important, and too busy, to chat.

(Only another two weeks to go).